All should decry hate crime, no matter the color

[Dr_Willie_Feelgood]

http://www.freep.com/article/20090915/OPINION03/909150399/1322/All-should-decry-hate-crime--no-matter-the-color

{ snip }

Getting hit in the back of the head with a chunk of concrete is getting hit in the back of the head with a chunk of concrete, whether you are Jew or Muslim, gay or straight, black or white.

That's reportedly what happened to Milligan the night of Aug. 18, after he walked his girlfriend to her home in their gritty Buffalo, N.Y., neighborhood. A mob of 10 to 12 black males stomped and kicked him and hit him with more concrete -- all in the head and face, says his father, Brian Sr., 41.

As they struck him, they taunted him. "You white motherf-----, we told you stay away from here. These are 'our' streets. We told you stay away from our women."

Brian, you see, is white. His girlfriend, Nicola Fletcher, 18, is African American. That difference in melanin has, they say, been a source of daily friction with a gang of black men in their neighborhood for months. She has been shot with paintballs, and they've both been repeatedly cursed and taunted.

{ snip }

------------------------------------------------

Love is colorblind, but hate focuses on every little difference.

(BTW - freep.com is the Detroit Free Press - Detroit's "liberal" paper, NOT freerepublic.com)

[el_bryanto]

1. This should provoke an interesting discussion

But obviously that's pretty terrible for this couple.

Bryant

[Dr_Willie_Feelgood]

15. Just as bad as the racial component is...

...the misogny of "OUR women".

Women are human beings, not possessions. EVERYONE on this planet needs to understand that. NO ONE gets a pass on that because of culture and tradition.

[Obamanaut]

2. I think it is interesting that in the article, the girlfriend is listed as

African American (with upper case A) while the assailants are black (with lower case b) males.

Why is that?

[Kaleva]

6. And that is relevent to the incident in what way?

I am white (note the lower case w) and am an American (note the upper case A).

[Obamanaut]

16. Not relevant to the incident in any way at all, but rather in the reporting

of it.

The assailants are the bad guys, and are reported as (b)lack, thus diminishing them in the eye of the reader, whereas the girlfriend gets upper case As, because she is the victim and is more deserving of recognition.

If we read the article, the assailants are from the same neighborhood, and protesting the outsider messing with their women, so we can assume that they are likewise African American as well (they were listed as black, after all.)

Edited to add this: Opinions vary as to Black vs black, African American, people of color, etc., and here's a different one

<snip>It seems to me that the attempt to classify Blacks in America is a difficult and 'touchy' subject. Depending on who you ask, a different term is in order. There are those who prefer African American, those who prefer Black, those who prefer Negro, and even some who prefer people of color.

When it comes to my personal preference, I refer to myself as a Black American. Ultimately, I'd like to be called a Nigerian-American, or an Ethipian-American, South African American - you get the picture. The problem is that so many American Black people have no genealogy that links them to a nation or a specific African culture. Therefore, such specific identification is imperative.

The term African American is inaccurate because according to modern thought, we all are of an African descent. So, such a term is all inclusvie as well. Black appears to be the most accurate, but even black is a far cry off from describing Black Americans.

Al Sharpton has no problem with the term people of color. I do. People of Color implies that white is the standard, but white is a color as well. I would even contend that the title for the NAACP (National Association for the the Advancement of Colored People) is a bit outdated in that colored is offensive to me.<more at link>

http://thebriefing2005.blogspot.com/2005/11/african-american-black-negro.html

[Kaleva]

20. I think the usage in the article is rather standard.

If I were to write about the people who live in a near by reservation, I'd refer to them as Native Americans and not native americans. I'm a white American male of Finnish descent. It'd be incorrect to describe me as a White american Male of finnish decent.

[imdjh]

8. One guess would be because her identity is known to the reporter.

But it's an interesting question. I don't use "African-American" as a rule, and I have ceased to capitalize any racial or ethnic designation when used with another. I don't write "blacks, Jews, and gays" for example; I write "blacks, jews, and gays". I tried capitalizing everything, but decided to go with lower case instead.

[Gwendolyn]

13. African American, like Caucasian, is official, whereas white and black are not.

Considering who Leonard Pitts Jr. is, it's doubtful there was some shadowy meaning behind the choice of words or spelling.

[Obamanaut]

18. Please see my post #16 (slightly above) nt

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. So sorry for this happening

Hatred can be taught to anyone. This was a terrible thing to happen. I hope the perps are caught and convicted. And I hope the couple aren't pressured to stop seeing one another. I fear mostly for Nicola and her family at this point.

[Name removed]

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[imdjh]

11. Not true. There are hate crimes.

But that doesn't mean there should be special laws to address the crimes themselves. What I do support is an oversight law which allows the victim or his family to request federal oversight when he believes that a crime isn't being prosecuted diligently due to bias in the system or community.

[UndertheOcean]

5. From my observations , Racism is not a White Problem only .

It is rampant in the Black community . And some cultures , like the Japanese , have much more blatant racial purity attitudes than Whites. Although Whites were historically the worst offenders when it came to slavery.

[Name removed]

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[UndertheOcean]

14. That statement has no factual basis , and I believe your ... calling out is not allowed

damn.

[sui generis]

12. yeah well, xenophobia is a well understood phenomenon

1. We learn by generalizing
2. We compare things to ourselves
3. We have an instinctive need to make our gene pool match with suitable "mates" and to control everyone else's reproduction

That means that people who don't look/act/talk like us are "bad" and any pre-emptive violence is in defense of our own gene pool. Somewhere in the back of our minds xenophobia is a matter of survival . . . of our genes.

Unfortunately that's where modern humans and neanderthals parted company, for the most part, but those atavistic urges are still deeply ingrained in us.

And that's just the cake. The icing is that there are people willing to manipulate others by playing those urges; so somebody is seizing territory and social power by galvanizing his posse to take action against the social ills in their lives - crackers dating "their" women.

Cut off the head, the rest will fall apart - there is one person in that group who is the cornerstone. That's who needs to be made an example of, legally speaking.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

17. +1

[pampango]

7. Interesting that, in my youth, white thugs were more likely to use violence against

an interracial couple (which were relatively rare in those days). My sense is that this type of violence is less common these days. That may just be our part of the MidWest (things may be different elsewhere?) and our son's high school (about 25% African American). He's in college now, but of all the problems we discussed while he was in high school, this never came up.

[Name removed]

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[ProgressiveProfessor]

19. Interracial couples today seem to be more controversial in the black community

And there is also gender aspects to it as well. Since my wife and I were a mixed race individuals we got a lot of feedback on it over time.

[Igel]

21. Think about group boundaries.

I think they used to be more fluid. To pass as white might be a good thing or selling out, it depended on your POV.

When a group's boundaries are patrolled both by internal and external factors, they're well marked. You can let people "stray" because they'll come back.

When a group's boundaries are threatened--by assimilation, by geographic and social mobility, by the simple freedom to have those in your group leave with no repercussion, it's more important to defend and accentuate the barriers that you can. Language, culture, even racial purity. Oddly, feelings of humiliation can become *greater* even as the basis for the humiliation decreases.

Go figure. But it's fairly common across cultures.